


A bullet is a kiss

by tristesses



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Friends With Benefits, Identity Porn, Sexy Spy Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trust is a handicap in their line of work, and friendship is a weakness. Natasha gives James Bond neither, but they have a good time regardless. </p><p>Or: It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and then it's a job well done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A bullet is a kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Because spy-on-spy action, whether literal or metaphorical, is super sexy.
> 
> Contains scenes of violence around the intensity of the Bond movies; I couldn't decide if they merited an archive warning, so I chose to leave it up to the readers' discretion. There are no spoilers for _Skyfall_.

Her name is Antonia Gatti, twenty-two, the shy daughter of an American mob boss turned into a beautiful swan by time, college, and a subtle nose job. She is smart and flirtatious, though easily deceived, and blonde, of course, as gentlemen so prefer. Cutting through her naïveté is a glimmer of something sharper, the hint of a blade parting the fine silk of her pampered upbringing. With a little time and the right motivations, she could become a danger in her own right, her connection to the Gatti family aside. But for now, she is young, pretty, intellectual, and looks at the man called Bond, James Bond with bright, eager eyes and the parted lips of a woman who wants to be taken hard by someone of whom her father would certainly disapprove.

Natasha's very proud of this persona. She spent a long time working on it.

The plan for the evening isn't to sleep with Bond, but to lure her target, a man by the name of Jacobson, into her arms. From there, she plans to go to his bed, and from there she'll usher him into the next life, and report back to her employers with his obituary in one hand and the flash drive from his safe in the other. Bond is just a distraction. He's meant to kill her, she thinks, or rather, he's meant to kill the spy who's meant to kill Jacobson, but she very much doubts she's the type of enemy agent he's expecting. He's enjoying himself, flirting with her while he waits for someone suspicious to show up. 

As for her, she's banking on her feigned interest in him putting him off her scent for a while, and Jacobson? Well, nothing gets him going quite like jealousy, so she's killing two birds with one stone while she waits to make her move.

"That's fascinating," she breathes to Bond, only half paying attention, and rests her chin on her hands. "Tell me more."

Bond obliges, telling her a story veiled in mystery and full of oblique references to the danger of his job. A girl like Antonia would eat it up, and Natasha does, leaning closer and letting him sneak a peek down her modestly-cut dress. The things she does for the sake of intel.

He's MI6, judging from his accent and his bearing, not to mention how the organization works for everything her employers want to bring down. His stories are mostly lies, but there's a kernel of truth in each of them; he's a spy, yes, but from the old school, where thuggery was just as valued as deception, murder wasn't a crime if in the name of Queen and country, and low-level misogyny was just part of the game. A quick glance at his hands confirms this: covered in small white scars, his knuckles thick with the memories of a hundred fist fights, a slice from a knife white across his palm. Spies like her are careful not to scar, or else they risk ruining their value as deep-cover operatives, but he doesn't seem to care. Just muscle, then? No, Natasha doesn't think so. She's not sure _what_ he is, other than a problem.

Jacobson sidles up next to them, and Natasha greets him with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. 

"I wanted to talk to you, Antonia," he says, and glances at Bond. "In private."

Subtle. Under the table, his hand grips at her thigh, his palm sweaty; she's let him boil long enough.

"It was lovely to meet you, Mr. Bond," she says to the spy, and offers her his hand. He kisses her fingers, holding her eyes.

"My pleasure, Miss Gatti," he says. Does he pause before saying her name, or is she imagining things? Giving him an artificial smile, she lets Jacobson whisk her away. She supposes it doesn't matter unless he complicates things, but she makes a note of it.

Five hours, one blowjob, and a gunshot later, Natasha is crawling down the trellis from Jacobson's hotel window to the car her employers have waiting for her, the flash drive tucked in her bra. Above her, the hotel room door bursts open, and she hurries her descent.

"Jacobson's dead," Bond says tersely, probably to his handler over his earpiece. From the sound of it, he rummages around the room, checking inside the empty safe. "The flash drive's gone."

Natasha pauses, one foot through the sunroof, and tilts her head up. Seconds later, Bond thrusts his head out the window and looks down. She can see the instant he recognizes her, the surprise, irritation, and resolve flashing across his face, and on a whim, she smiles, waggling her fingers, before sliding into the car and speeding away.

He'll pursue her, of course, but he won't catch her. Five blocks away, Natasha slips from the car while it's still in motion, clad not in her red dress but a plain black jumpsuit, her hair tucked under a cap and her Widow's Bites strapped to her wrists. She scales a building, jumps from roof to roof, and is crouched low and hidden when she sees a decidedly conspicuous sports car go whipping by. Natasha exhales, and shakes herself loose. Bravado aside, that had been too close for comfort; if she'd delayed two minutes, he would have caught her in the hotel.

She delivers the flash drive to her employers and receives her payment, but she doesn't forget his name. Bond, James Bond.

****

. . .

Two years later, she's a brunette, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with two knives tucked in her belt and a nearly empty .25 ACP Beretta in her hand. The entire operation's fallen to pieces, and her only choice now is to get out while she can and stay low for a while. Maybe take a trip to Maui, celebrate six years free of the Red Room's leash. She's never been there before, as far as she can remember.

Natasha ducks the scattered fire of an enemy operative and scrambles up a fire escape, taking careful aim and firing twice. The man drops. A clean shot. Natasha would congratulate herself, except a sniper on the rooftop just sent a bullet whizzing by her head, clipping her just enough to send a wash of blood down her face, blinding her.

"Fuck," Natasha swears, and clambers through an open window. Gently searching her scalp with her fingertips, she finds the wound, a shallow one, nothing to be concerned about. She wipes the blood from her eyes just in time to see a M67 grenade clatter to the floor next to her.

 _"Fuck!"_ Natasha yells again, and throws herself bodily out the window as the grenade explodes, missing the fire escape and hitting the ground hard enough to stun her. A few steel fragments embed themselves in her thigh, though thankfully they miss any major arteries. Coughing, she drags herself up, clinging to the wall, and looks straight down the barrel of a pistol held by a furious mercenary. A gun fires as Natasha drops to the ground, sliding a knife from her belt with steady fingers. _Today is not the day I die,_ she reminds herself fiercely. _Not like this._

Someone grabs her by the shoulder and drags her up, and Natasha sinks a knife into their side. It skids off reinforced Kevlar, and the man says, "Is that how you always greet people, Miss Gatti?"

Her head jerks up, but she doesn't let go of the knife. 

"Bond?" she says incredulously, and then, "This isn't your op."

"Really? I thought it was," he says laconically. "You're welcome, by the way."

Natasha glances over his shoulder at the soldier lying motionless on the ground. "Thanks. What are you doing here?"

"My job." He gives her a sidelong look as she props herself against the wall, the empty Beretta dropping from her fingers, blood pooling at her foot. "Might want to put pressure on that."

"They teach you that in training?" Natasha uses a knife to rip a strip of her shirt off, and stems the blood flow with a neat tourniquet. She'll start to heal in no time, but there's nothing wrong with being careful. "What's your objective?"

Bond narrows his eyes at her, but apparently deems her worthy of an answer. "Jiménez."

Natasha nods, quick and short. "He hired me."

"I doubt he's very happy with you right now."

"Yeah, I know." She catches his eye. "I also know exactly where he is."

"And I should trust you because…"

She gives him a cold little smile. "I'd like to survive the night."

Whatever Bond thinks of her - and she doubts it's very good - that rationale is enough for him. He nods, and gestures for her to lead. She makes a detour to the body of the dead soldier, and finds his gun empty, his pockets and belt free of ammo. Damn. Bond, she notices, doesn't offer her a weapon, a pointed reminder of how little he trusts her. It flies in the face of her instincts to walk with a threat at her back, but she does this time; she thinks she has the measure of him. Whether out of cold practicality or a misapplied sense of chivalry, he won't try to kill her without at least asking her to turn around first.

In Jiménez's private courtyard, she sends Bond through the back way she'd mapped out the first time she came here, and covers him as he sneaks through. Two men try to follow him; she drops down on one from the ceiling and strangles him with her legs as she grabs the other by the hair and slits his throat. Before she hears the final gunshot and subsequent silence heralding Bond's success, she kills several more with similar tactics. When he comes back out, she thinks he looks a little impressed.

"All these men with two knives," he says appreciatively, one professional to another. He flips one over with his toe and arches his eyebrows at her. "Interesting bruising on his throat."

"I have strong thighs," she says as blandly as possible, and watches his interest in her skyrocket. Oh, she could have some fun with that.

"You know," Bond says, slipping his gun into its holster, "you probably shouldn't stay here. Too dangerous."

"Are you offering me a place to spend the night?" she asks archly, and Bond's smile flickers into place. It's the same one he gave to Antonia Gatti. Natasha doesn't usually mix work and pleasure, but she thinks she'd like to claw it off his face while she makes him come. "Real smooth, Bond."

"Anything for a lady," he says flippantly, and offers her his arm. Natasha takes it daintily, and they step over the bodies on their way out of the courtyard. Two spies, two knives, and a Walther PPK; nearly twenty people dead in ten minutes. Natasha does appreciate efficiency. 

She only limps a little on the way to their getaway car.

****

. . .

Bond fucks like he fights, rough, blunt, and skillful. It's exactly what Natasha craves after a mission like this, and when he slams her against the hotel door, his mouth hard on hers and his hands bruising her breasts and ass, she arches into him and scrapes her teeth against his collarbone, knotting her fingers in his short hair, giving as good as she gets.

He doesn't avoid the bandages on her thigh or the scab in her hair. She likes that.

"What's your name?" he pants as she rubs her knee against his cock, pressing just hard enough to make things interesting. It's an offhand remark, an afterthought, like asking her about her favorite color or what film she likes the best.

Natasha sucks on his lower lip, then bites it hard; Bond groans a little, and she whispers, "Anastasia."

"Like the dead princess." 

"Exactly."

He laughs, and Natasha does too. It's a lie and he knows it, just like she knows that James Bond is a _nom de guerre_ itself, though it's probably the name on his birth certificate. Names can mean everything to people like them, or they can mean nothing; Bond is one of the latter.

He pins her to the door and teases her with wicked, calloused fingers until she's moaning out loud; Natasha writhes against his grip, and in the back of her mind, she catalogues all the ways to break his bones.

"What are you thinking?" he asks her.

"About ways to hurt you," she says, matter-of-fact, and he covers up his shiver with a sardonic chuckle and drops to his knees. Does he trust her, or does he just like playing with fire? Natasha can't tell. The mystery is fascinating, and when he puts his mouth against her and lets her wrap her deadly thighs around his neck, it makes her come almost as quickly as his merciless tongue does.

Natasha cries out when she climaxes, her hips jolting and knocking against Bond's chin. He leans back and lets her go; she slithers to the floor and says, "I want to fuck you."

"Good. Then we agree," he says with an inviting waggle of his eyebrows, and grabs her, rolling over her and slotting himself in between her legs. 

She likes how he manhandles her, not purposefully rough but simply careless, like the thought that she could break never once enters his mind. When he breaches her, he thrusts hard and deep, slowly, taunting her; it feels so good it nearly hurts, and Natasha drags him closer until he's nearly crushing her, scratching raised red lines on his back, a code broken only by his streaks of scar tissue. Her second orgasm makes her eyes roll back in her head, and she bites the thick muscle of his shoulder hard enough to draw blood.

"What are you, a vampire?" he inquires with fake tartness when he sits up. His hands shake as he tosses the condom into the trash, still recovering from round one. She hopes he has a short refractory period.

"You like it," she accuses, and stands. "I'm going to shower. Join me if you want."

In the shower, she washes off the dried blood and dirt from her wounds; her scalp's scabbed over enough to forget about, but she still has shards from the grenade in her thigh. Bond scrubs himself all over while she digs them out with her knife, placing them on the counter in a neat little line. While she sews herself up, he watches, letting the water run over him, silent.

"How long?" he asks eventually. She doesn't need him to clarify.

"All my life," she replies, and joins him, letting the last trickles wash down her leg and over their feet, disappearing down the drain in a bloody swirl. He hears her but doesn't react, not even a little. Maybe he'd already figured it out, figured her out; she can't quite tell.

Clean and slippery, they retire to the bedroom. There, Natasha gets him on his back, pinning his wrists down. He raises an eyebrow in question, and she reminds him, "I said I wanted to fuck you."

Unlike earlier, his face is closed and hard to read, but she feels him stiffen ever so slightly before relaxing. He really is an old dog, a true member of Her Majesty's secret service, paranoid and traditionally masculine to the last. Natasha almost does want to fuck him, to penetrate him, to see how far he'll go for the sake of saving face and getting intel on her. But she's not in the mood tonight; no, tonight she'd like to pretend that she's vulnerable, that she's let her defenses go. No games.

She digs her nails into his wrists, and says softly, but not gently, "Relax, Bond. What do you think I'm going to do to you?"

"I can only hope I'm right," he murmurs, and the hint of a smirk curls his lips. Impulsively, she kisses him there, right on the corner of his mouth; it's strangely intimate in a way neither of them are comfortable with, and she draws back immediately.

"You probably are," she says, and straddles him easily. The stitches on her thigh complain, and she ignores them. Sinking back, she can feel his cock pressing against her folds, and she rocks her hips, sliding down his length and back up.

"Condom," she orders, and he fumbles with the drawer of the bedside table for a moment before handing one to her mutely. She knows a dozen clever tricks to put it on, with her mouth, her fingers, even her cunt, but she doesn't bother with those; she rolls it down his cock briskly, leaning down to mouth at his balls, firm and heavy, his soft skin so delicate against her lips. She doesn't bite, letting a hint of teeth do the trick, and when she sits up his cock is straining against his stomach and Bond looks a little wild-eyed.

"You vixen," he breathes, and she can't tell if his light tone of mockery is genuine or an affectation. She hums in noncommittal response, guiding him inside her. It's just as good as it was the first time, and she rides him hard, giving no quarter, taking what she wants. When she wraps her fingers around his wrists and holds him down, he doesn't complain, only strains against her grip without any intention of breaking it, and when she lets him go and puts a hand around his throat, loosely, more of a caress than a threat, he comes with a choked cry, his hips jerking hard. Natasha makes him finish the rest of the job with his hand, though it's not like he resists, and when she comes a third time, convulsing on top of him, he exhales heavily and lets himself flop back against the sheet, satiated. He licks her fluids off his fingers while Natasha slips off him and to his side. Resting her head against his stomach, she breathes.

They doze, but not for long. Natasha rouses within the hour, and though Bond feigns sleep, she bets he's awake, too. Her stitches held through their wrestling, barely, and she wraps a linen towel over them before tiptoeing through the room, slipping on her jeans that now boast a few stylish tears, stealing his dress shirt and leaving the first three buttons undone. The steel shards she collects; the condoms she douses with water; and the future of any strands of hair or other DNA she might have shed will have to be left to chance. May MI6 enjoy them.

She leaves without saying goodbye, and idly hopes that the next time she sees him, she won't have to kill him.

****

. . .

Symkaria, August. She's a redhead and wears a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, and is quietly longing for the days when cleaning up after evil cabals in the sweltering heat was not a standard part of her job.

 _"I can't believe we have to do this,"_ Barton grouses over the comm.

"It could be worse," she points out brightly, and he swears at her. She ducks her head and grins.

"You're right," a familiar voice says. Natasha whips around, taken by surprise, but only for a moment. James Bond, bloodied and battered, sits against a stone wall, holding a red-stained wad of cloth to his head. He flashes her a little smirk. "We _could_ be in Latveria."

"Please don't," she says with an exaggerated shiver, quickly hiding any shock she might have shown. "I hear if you say that three times, Doom will appear."

"An awful prospect." Bond tilts his head back and gives her a speculative look. "Though I hear you and your friends could handle it, Miss Gatti."

"Anastasia," she corrects, and he laughs softly. "What are you doing here, anyway? This wasn't a joint op."

"It wasn't?" he asks innocently, and only grins when she rolls her eyes. "You look good."

She surveys him, and says bluntly, "You look old."

It's true. There are lines etched at the corners of his mouth she doesn't recognize, an unfamiliar grief in the way he holds his lips and the tightness of his eyes. Four years can be a lifetime for a spy.

"Charming as ever," he says dryly. He seems on the verge of saying something else, but as he does, her comm buzzes in her ear. Natasha holds up a finger as Sitwell says, _"Widow, report to the 'carrier."_

"Got it," she replies, and glances back to Bond. "I've got to go."

"So I assumed." He salutes her in fond mockery, a funny smile on his lips. Then his eyes sharpen, and she thinks suddenly of his fluid movements, the cold, cruel energy that fills him when he kills. "Until next time, then."

She nods back, and turns to walk away when he adds, pointedly, "Black Widow."

Natasha pauses, and looks back at him.

"Until next time, 007," she promises, and her smile cuts like knives. 

She hopes next time she sees him, she won't have to kill him, and given her position with S.H.I.E.L.D. and his with MI6, she probably won't, if only for the sake of international cooperation. But they're spies, and they can break the rules. If she has to, both of them know that's just the nature of the game.


End file.
